Sad to see the Houston Street Fair & Market go

If there was one big indicator that Saturday’s Houston Street Fair & Market was the last one, it was the abundance of cameras. At least four TV stations sent cameramen for B-roll. Seemed like everyday folk were panning across the fair’s food booths, jewelry vendors and musicians with digital video cameras in hand. Quite a few still photographers walked around with fancy DSRLs. Seemed like more cameras than usual.

Perhaps the other reason for so many cameras was because this last Houston Street Fair & Market was also one of the most photogenic with its petting zoo and snakes on display.

I entered the fair around 1 p.m. My first stop had to be the petting zoo. Walking over I saw a clown dude in a purple top hat and ringmaster’s coat twisting balloon animals all by himself. I have to talk to that guy, I thought, but first cute farm animals.

At the Fiesta Farm petting zoo, a little girl was fulfilling her daughter’s duty and held up a baby pig as her mother was trying to figure out the camera. The noise that came out of the piggy as it wiggled around the girl’s bear hug I wish to never hear again. Little pigs have the most horrific, hair-raising screams. Incidentally, it set off the goose’s equally anti-cute, but predatory-sounding honking. Like a dinosaur’s or something. I really wanted to pay the $1 and pet me some cute furries, but it seemed borderline creepy. Teenager girls got away with it. I couldn’t. Aside from the pig and the goose, there was a rooster, some pheasants, a llama, two rabbits and four goats. The goats did nothing.

My mom’s phobia of snakes prohibits me from showing pictures of the reptiles. But there were plenty on display, brought in straight from Snake Farm Animal World. (I’m not sure how my mom’s fear of snakes got started but whenever she sees one on TV or in a magazine she really freaks out and flees the room in less time than it would take for an actual snake to land a strike.) They brought a Bull Snake, a Desert Kingsnake and a Texas Rat Snake. The Emory Rat Snake coiled up inside its see-through container like it wanted to strike and then I told it to be cool or I’d go all Rikki-Tikki-Tavi on its ass, and then it backed off. They also brought tarantulas, but I got over those like in the sixth grade.

What the last Houston Street Fair & Market did was make me actually sit and watch and observe. While I usually just breeze through it in an hour, I spent a good three hours out there on Saturday. I listened to most of the sets of the cover band The Tim and Bob Show, the country/honky tonk The Lavens and Christian singer/songwriter John Anthony Garcia.

The balloon animal guy left early. At least he wasn’t at his station around 2:30 p.m.

I was mesmerized by the Doodle Train. The Doodle Train is for the little kids. The “engine” is a red Polaris Hawkeye 4×4 ATV and it tows around seven barrels cut and cushioned so that little kids can sit in them. Each barrel had pool noodles attached so that they stood straight up like they do on Goodwill Stores’ shopping carts.

It was a scaled back Houston Street Fair & Market. It didn’t go out with a bang. But that was the nature of the Houston Street Fair & Market: a smaller event aimed at giving downtown a little monthly shot in the arm. I will miss it.